Slides from my presentation to Ego-Media seminar, King's College London, Mon November 7th, 2016. Contact me at: http://www.patkane.global

1. CAREERING
Reflexivity,
play and a life
in the media
Pat Kane
Ego-Media seminar,
King’s College,
London, Nov 7, 2016
www.patkane.global

2. ‘In my 30-year commercial
media career, and since
graduating with an English
degree (focussing on
Film/TV studies and
Literary Theory) in 1985, I
have maintained a
constant interest in
theories about the
constitution of subjectivity
and agency – and a
willingness to test them out
in my own creative and
commercial practice.

3. ‘In this seminar, I want to
chart this theory/practice
relationship – which has
involved a shift from
drawing on “reflexive” and
“discursive” theories of self
and agency (Giddens,
Althusser, Foucault)
to ones that source a
“protean” self in the
evolutionary imperatives of
human play and creativity
(Huizinga, Panksepp,
Bateson).

4. 1982-1988: Pop music and the interpellated, constructed self
Author is a subject-position produced
by discourse (Althusser)
The self is forged by entry into the
symbolic order, always susceptible to
fissure and morphing under pressure
of the desire that is produced by the
moment of self-making (Lacan)
James Brown’s four collapses a night
(Simon Frith)
Institutional control is the key political
prize – get that, you shape the
subjectivities (Eagleton)…
…but remember that there can be a
collective psychological passivity in the face
of incessant change, that repressive social
orders can exploit (Gramsci)
Though get ready for a world of cybernetic
information networks with amazing potential
for empowerment (Nicholls, The Work of Culture
in the Age of Cybernetic System, Screen 21, Winter
1988)

5. André Frankovits, ed., Seduced and Abandoned:
The Baudrillard Scene.
Compiled by
Eddie Yeghiayan
Frankovits, André, ed., Seduced and Abandoned: The
Baudrillard Scene. Semiotext(e). Autonomedia.
Glebe, NSW, Australia & New York: Stonemoss
Services & Semiotexte(e), 1984.
Contents:
Frankovits, André. "Letter of Introduction":5-8
Foss, Paul. "Despero Ergo Sum":9-16
Delaruelle, Jacques and McDonald, John.
"Resistance and Submission":17-27
Burchill, Louise."Either/or: Peripeteia of an Alternative
on Jean Baudrillard's De la Séduction":28-44
Gibson, Ross. "Customs and Excise":45-57
Hood, Colin. "Fly by Night":58-62
Carter, Nick. "From Red Center to Black Hole":63-82
Preston, Andrew. "Down to Earth":82-90
Meagan, Morris. "Room 101 or A Few Things Worst in
the World":91-117
Interpellation and discourse theory works for a young eighties pop star in the
major music business because he is faced with over-determining ideologies of
promotion, success and value – formats and conventions of pop music and
genre that are surprisingly fixed.... It's only the force of Lacanian 'desire'
irrupting into the midst of everything that makes change possible, inevitable.
But it results in a divided, schizo-personality, not much grace or civility...

6. 1988-1993: Pop activism and the public sphere
Beware of all blithe assertions of positivity,
optimism and hopefulness (Adorno)
Communicative rationality constitutes the
public sphere, rooted in the immanent
intersubjectivity of language – and can
found a ‘constitutional patriotism’
(Habermas)
Nationalism might be a driver of modernity,
rather than a brake (Nairn, Gellner)
Beware of “enlightenment
fundamentalism” (Gellner)
Thatcherism is a “regressive
modernisation” which is essentially
riding winds of post-Fordist change,
“flexible specialisation”, that will
eventuate in a new politics (Stuart
Hall, Geoff Mulgan)

7. Glasgow University Rector 1990-1993 (defeating Tony
Benn) – years of constitutional, anti-Tory activism
But also losing
major record
contract in 1991
(not coincidental)
…
Moved into
journalism, radio,
made music
part-time
RESULTS IN....

8. 1993-2000: from presenter/writer to editor/founder
Technology is our second nature –
and it also develops like a
complex adaptive system in
biology (Kelly)
The politics of network society is
defined by relationship between
the Net and the Self – one
disembedding and flexibilising, the
the other seeking security and
identity thru culture (Castells)
Technoscience is becoming so
powerful that we need to think of
the new “consiliences” between
natural science and human/social
science (Brockman, Wilson)
The internet is perhaps our most
glorious manifestation yet of the
expanding circle of interdependence
that marks the development of social
complexity (Wright)

9. Associate editor and columnist, The Herald,
1995-1998
One of founding Editors,
The Sunday Herald, 1998-
2000
Newspapers/broadcasting (beginning to be amplified by the internet in this
period) is the “good system” - an organisation and bureaucracy supporting an
ethos that aims to “comfort the afflicted/afflict the comfortable”. Theory makes it
worth the struggle....
Which helped to shape...

10. 2000-present: ideas entrepreneur with the Play Ethic
Brian Sutton-Smith’s The
Ambiguity of Play
-Adaptive potentiation is the
essence of play
-Multidisciplinary study is
required to understand play
-A focus on play may begin
to disclose a new ‘creative
ontology’ (Deleuze) – a new
foundation for human
nature, and thus human
society

11. http://www.theplayethic.com
A book, a website, and
eventually a consultancy, but
always a constant
conversation with people
who increasingly find this
“meme” through searches on
the Net and peer-to-peer
recommendations...with
global reach....

12. 2005-present: making music in the digital revolution
The digital revolution discloses a commons of knowledge and culture
– first in the music business and then elsewhere in the content
industries (Shirky, Lessig)
What might the politics of this new ‘commonism’ be? And how
ironic/fatalistic should a content producer be in the face of this new
situation? (Negri)

13. 2005-present: making music in the digital revolution
On ITV’s Hit Me Baby One More Time, 2006

14. http://hueandcry.ning.com
Network theory tells us that we can only TRY to make money out of
a community that has all the power... It’s an ironic biz model
We're sing what is ubiquitous (digital content) to drive people to
what is scarce (live performance, rare and beautiful objects with our
imprimatur)
In the 'legacy/heritage' business – 1 million Hue And Cry consumers between 1987-
1991 – how do we reconnect to their memories, & excite their sensibilities with new
material that echos the past, but satisfies our own desire for originality/poiesis?

15. What Joni Mitchell once
called the “star-making
machinery” is now a banal
potentiality within networks
of “mass self-
communication” (to use
Manuel Castells term)
Is this a tool? (distributing
symbolic
leadership/activism)
Or a trap? (more deeply
embedding capitalist
individualism)
Diamond Reynolds, in a still from her live-
streamed cell-phone footage of the moments
immediately after her boyfriend, Philando
Castile, was shot and killed by a police officer
during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights,
Minnesota, July 6, 2016

16. CAREERING
Reflexivity,
play and a life
in the media
Pat Kane
Ego-Media seminar,
King’s College,
London, Nov 7, 2016
www.patkane.global